Girls in White Dresses - JENNIFER CLOSE [41]
But when Mary started at Slater, she found she needed her cigarettes more than ever. All of the other new lawyers, who she’d imagined would be her friends, were competitive and nasty. Some of them were secretive about their desire to be the best. Others, like Barbara Linder, followed Mary around, asking her what she was working on, how many hours she had logged that week, and what the partners had said to her.
Slater had a tradition of announcing congratulations to the new lawyers who passed the bar over the loudspeaker, and then having a cocktail reception. For weeks, Mary wondered what it would be like if she didn’t hear her name, if she was the one person of the group to fail. Until she heard the results of her test, there was no way she could stop smoking. And then when she did find out that she’d passed, the relief was so immediate and overwhelming that she made a weird noise and got tears in her eyes. Also, she wet herself just a little bit and so she let herself have a cigarette. If you pee in your pants, she thought, you deserve at least that.
Mary was at the office until at least nine every night, and that was if she was lucky. She was exhausted and sad to go to sleep at night because she knew it would mean the whole thing would start all over again soon. Each morning, as she walked from the subway to her building, she thought, “If I get hit by a car today, I won’t have to go to work.” She didn’t want to get seriously hurt, of course. She just wanted a minor bump that would send her to the hospital for a week or two, where she could watch TV and eat Jell-O.
No one had told her it would feel like this. She’d gotten so much advice about her first year at a law firm, but no one had ever said, “You will be constantly afraid.” And that’s what she was. She was afraid that someone would come to her with work to do, and she was afraid that no one would come to her with work to do. She was scared that she was missing something in her research. She went over each assignment she was given, and then she was terrified that they would all think she was slow. Whenever someone said “case law” or “document review,” her first instinct was to hide underneath her desk.
Sometimes, just as she was finishing up one project, feeling like she’d accomplished one thing, someone would come to her office to give her a new task. She was sure she was failing.
At night, Mary would take breaks and leave her office to go to the roof for a cigarette. It was wrong, she knew, but she couldn’t help it. She only smoked at night. During the day, there were too many people around and she didn’t want them to think that she was actually a smoker. She looked forward all day to standing outside and lighting her cigarette. She loved those five minutes of quiet, standing and blowing smoke. She breathed in and out, and told herself that smoking, for her, was a little bit like meditation. It was keeping her sane.
There was a lot to worry about those first few months, but one of the biggest things was this: Mary was afraid that she was getting fat. Each night that she ate dinner at the office, she felt her ass getting bigger. When it came time to order, she would look through the menus in disbelief that she was staying for dinner again. Sometimes, in a fit, she would order lobster or two different entrées. “They want me to stay, they can pay for it,” she would think as she clicked in her order on her computer. Other times she’d order from the diner, cheeseburgers and fries, and a milkshake for good measure. After these giant meals, she would go up to the roof and smoke. Breathe in and out, she would repeat. Breathe in and out.
In the bathroom, she examined her butt, turning to the side and running her hands over it, trying to measure how much bigger it was than the day before. She’d seen her cousin Colleen gain fifty pounds during her first year at a law firm. Colleen went from normal to almost obese in a matter of months, and she grabbed the weight and held on to it. “It’s worse than having a baby,” she’d said last Thanksgiving. “It’s just part of